Use case for Private Network inside a Virtual Connect?

[chuckk281]

Prasenjit had a customer question:

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Any one has some use case for Private Network in VC Domain. I got one from HP VC for Cisco Network Administrator. But that is more or less configuration example and not a real life scenario.

Any pointer would be much appreciated.

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Input from Robert:

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There really are no configuration examples for ‘private network’.  You can either enable ‘private network’ or not.  This feature provides a type of firewall function from a Virtual Connect perspective.  It merely prevents any switched communications through Virtual Connect between any ethernet ports that are members of the same VC ‘private’ network.  Traffic will be forwarded through the ‘private network’ uplink ports only.  It is the responsibility of the customer network management to configure access control lists or private networks to properly forward or switch the traffic once it leaves VC.  Be aware of known problems when ‘private network’ is enabled prior to VC 3.18.  The following is from the resolved issues section of the 3.18 release notes.

Resolved an issue associated with Private Networks when the VC-Enet network topology required server

connections to traverse an aggregated VC stacking link (one composed of multiple interfaces

aggregated together into a LAG) wherein the communication from one or more server could be lost

when the aggregation group dissolved and was reformed. This resulted from all legs of the LAG not

properly being reenabled in association with the Private Network. The servers that could experience the

disruption where those whose transmissions were distributed (load balanced) to a leg of the LAG that

was not reenabled for the Private Network.

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Also input from Jim:

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See Multiple vNets can provide server-to-server communication and VLAN isolation form the HP Virtual Connect traffic flow document.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c03154250/c03154250.pdf

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Any other input or questions?